Garden Surprise: Birds and Backstage Tour

Three kinds of gardens await visitors to the National Tropical Botanical Garden headquarters in Lawai on Kauai: The carefully laid out and signed visitors center gardens, which are free to visit; the artistically designed “garden rooms” of the Allerton Garden in Lawai Valley, which requires a guided tour; and the sprawling, living archive and laboratory that is the McBryde Garden, also in the valley but open to guided and self-guided tours.

Jeanne Cooper

An endangered Hawaiian common moorhen paddles in Lawai Stream at the McBryde Garden.

Hawaii Insider has finally toured all three in Lawai (along with the North Shore’s Limahuli Garden), with the McBryde Garden completing the South Shore trifecta. They’re all winners, depending on your interest in plants and the amount of cash in your wallet — in Lawai, guided tours are $45, self-guided tours are $20, with proceeds benefitting the federally chartered but not federally funded NTBG. Yet if you’re interested in fauna as well as flora, consider this: The number and variety of birds I spotted strolling the varying terrain of the McBryde Garden almost made me want to start one of those official life lists. In addition to imports like the cattle egret (busily following the gardeners’ lawnmowers), Erckel’s francolin, java sparrows and the ubiquitous mynas, I also saw a soaring white-tailed tropicbird and an endangered Hawaiian common moorhen (‘alea ‘ula in Hawaiian). The latter was happily swimming in a stream near the new restroom facilities (donated by the late Michael Crichton as a thank-you for NTBG’s letting him host his wedding in the gardens).

These sightings prompted me to write about Kauai’s other easy birding opportunities for the Dec. 19 Aloha Friday column. Most of the bird photos weren’t able to be uploaded with that story, so I’ve updated this post to include some of the pictures below the garden photo on this page.

Since “botanical” and “garden” are in its name, NTBG doesn’t tout its animal side that much, but our tram driver Phil — a former Stanford professor and Yosemite tour guide who leads NTBG tours — confirmed our bird sightings and also noted that Lawai Beach has seen hundreds of endangered green sea turtle hatchlings in the most recent season, as well as the occasional monk seal. I also discovered on this trip — too late to take advantage of it — that NTBG now offers a “Hō’ike Tour” (from the Hawaiian word meaning “to show”) that includes all kinds of behind-the-scenes information as it visits areas not normally open to the public. Those include a waterfall trail, the conservation center where rare plants are propagated and nursed, and the “jungle side” (remember the dinosaur-egg-holding Moreton Bay figs from “Jurassic Park”?) of Allerton Garden.

The guided, 3-1/2 hour tour costs $85 — meaning it might stay on my “to-do” and not “have done” list for some time — but those who go before Dec. 31 can take advantage of a two-for-one special. Perhaps that’s an idea they can propagate in the new year as well.

Jeanne Cooper

The price is always right to tour the visitor center gardens at the National Tropical Botanical Garden on Kauai: It’s free. But the Allerton and McBryde gardens are worth supporting with a paid tour.